Thursday, March 31, 2016

The following story appeared this afternoon on Canada's PostMedia network.

He wanted sex -- and wasn't just full of hot air.A woman in Sweden called police to report a man farted in her apartment after she refused to have sex with him.According to regional newspaper Hallandsposten, the unnamed woman told police the man delivered the "revenge fart" before leaving her apartment in a huff.The gas disturbed her "peace of mind," she said."It smelled very bad in the apartment," she noted, according to the police.That's it... the hole story...

Apparently there was much soiling of shorts in the offices of the Hon. John McCallum, Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (in that order) when news leaked out of the Canuck government's quiet wind-down of its ill-conceived and ill-received plan to bring in more 1000s of Muslim "refugees". See "Canuck government backpedals on admitting Syrian refugees", WWW 26/3/16.

Not wanting to be seen to be caving to the likes of Marine Le Pen, or -- heaven forbid -- listening to Canadian public opinion, Mr. McCallum announced today that his department will now process all applications for Syrians received as of March 31st, with an eye towards welcoming another 10,000 to Canada by the end of this year or early 2017. "We can’t go on to infinity, but we are doing the best we can to meet the demand," he told Canadian Press, speaking from Germany where he is studying Angela Merkel's successful policies of Willkommenskultur.

Mr. McCallum said the government remains committed to refugees, but has to manage the system in a responsible way. He said the increased number of Syrians will see this year’s admissions jump even higher than the maximum 18,000 privately sponsored refugees Canada had intended to accept. However, the roughly 10,000 applications for Syrians that will now be processed will not count against the global cap on applications, which means that Canada won't accept any fewer "refugees" from places like Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya, Morocco, etc etc ad nauseam.

Mr. McCallum also said his department will do its best to ensure processing the Syrian cases won’t mean further delays for refugees from "elsewhere". Only European Christians will be required to wait at the back of the line.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

I see by the aviation news that NASA and the American military-industrial complex are reviving the idea of building an SST -- SuperSonic Transport -- since that worked out so well for the British-French consortium that built the Concorde. The contractor being given charge of the project is... wait for it... Lockheed-Martin. That's the corporate successor to Lockheed, who built the C-5 Galaxy, which was for a time the world's largest military transport aircraft. The picture below gives a good idea of the size of the thing. As Donald Trump would say, it's huuuuuuge!

The reason given for building this monster, according to the Air Force Fact sheet extant in the 1970s, was to "provide a vast capability for rapid deployment of both combat forces and their fighting equipment". Wikipedia tells us "The C-5 Galaxy's development was complicated, including significant cost overruns, and Lockheed suffered significant financial difficulties. Shortly after entering service, cracks in the wings of many aircraft were discovered and the C-5 fleet was restricted in capability until corrective work was completed." No surprises there, then.

Still the question remains, why was the C-5 built so damn big? John Kidner, author of The Kidner Report (Acropolis Books, 1972) provides an explanation which should be read (or reread) by the folks at the Pentagon and every other government department or agency planning the SST or whatever other Next Big Thing. The Kidner Report is a satirical look at bureaucracy. In the chapter headed "The Paper Criterion", the author makes a revolutionary suggestion...I maintain that as long as there must be files, then let's make them more valuable from the standpoint of sheer volume as well as contents. That way, there won't be so much bellyaching about having to store them. This can be accomplished by using them as a standard -- a criterion. Before this is dismissed as a three-martini concept, let me point out that it may have already been tried.There has been a good bit of speculation about just how the C-5 Galaxy...came to be as big as it is: six stories high and a block or so long.... I think that a PAPER CRITERION experiment is in progress and that it will be made known when it proves successful.Rumor has it that back in 1950 an Air Force general, dismayed at the mountains of proposals he had to plow through, said to his aide, "By Gawd, Alphie! I wish somebody'd build an airplane big enough to carry all the Gawdamned paper it takes to get it built! That way we'd be able to carry all we needed to\" Knowing that a general's wish is a colonel's panic, I felt that something must have come of it.I learned that the invitations to bid on the Galaxy were 1500 pages long. The five competing contractors responded in 240,000 pages. These were reproduced in 30 copies and distributed for review to 400 people. The significant point here is the weight of the paper -- 35 tons! 70,000 pounds!Now comes the matter of costs. Thne original estimate was about 3.2 billion dollars but the final tab amounted to 5 billion, or about 60 percent over estimate. Acting on the assumption that the size of the aircraft would be proportional to the weight of the paper, I concluded that the costs would be related to the size in the same manner. Therefore we must add 60 percent of the original weight of the paper (70,000 lbs) which is 42,000; then 70,000 and 42,000 total up to 112,000 lbs. To this add 1000 lbs. for paper clips and staples and the total is 113,000 lbs. This is exactly the cargo carrying capacity of the C-5A, and is quoted in the fact sheet describing its characteristics.It is not hard to envision the immense value the files will take on as they are used as standards for larger aircraft carriers, space stations, submarine fleets, and transports [including SSTs! Walt]. Bureaucracy will no longer have to fight for storage space, and fellowcrats won't have to blush over the file drawers pregnant with their creations. And the time will come when the old request -- "Can we get that in writing" -- will be given the honored reception it deserves.

Quick, now! In what countries would you expect to find passenger train carriages reserved for (or restricted to) women? Saudi Arabia, maybe? [Do they even have trains there? Ed.] Or how about Egypt, Indonesia or Pakistan? Yes, that would be right. And what is the majority religion in those countries? Yes, Islam is the right answer.

Do any other countries come to mind? Oh, yes... India, where Muslims are a minority. That's the case also in Germany. "What???", I hear you say. "They have women-only train cars in Germany???" Yes, they do now! Mitteldeutsche Regiobahn, a railway company which operates a line between Leipzig and Chemnitz, has introduced women-only carriages on some of its trains. Women (and boys under 10) may choose to ride in a car situated next to an office for train staff, "to encourage a safer atmosphere for all female travellers in general."

Errr, yes... safer for women... that's good. But why now? Just a coincidence, no doubt, that the gender-segregated carriages are being introduced just days after just days after the first suspect of the Cologne sex attacks was charged with a sex crime. Last Thursday, a 26-year-old Algerian man was charged with sexual assault and theft in relation to the New Year’s Eve rampage in the west German city.

More than 1100 criminal complaints were received in relation to the New Year’s Eve events, including over 480 accusations of sexual assault. There was controversy in the lamestream media over a perceived cover-up because of the ethnicity of the attackers, described by many witnesses as being of North African or Arab appearance. And that's they were, no matter how much the liberal hug-an-immigrant media may deny it -- young Muslim migrants, "refugees" and asylum-seekers, some of the million-plus "welcomed" into Germany last year.

As you might expect, Mitteldeutsche Regiobahn has denied the new carriages are linked to the Cologne attacks. It's just a coincidence. And just one more example of the Islamization of Europe.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

During last fall's federal election campaign, Canada's Liberal Party -- pandering to Muslims, immigrants and Volvo liberals all in one go -- promised to bring 25,000 refugees from war-torn Syria to Canada by the end of the year. Canuck voters, moved by a picture of a little boy drowned on a beach, poured their compassion straight into the ballot box, making Justin Trudeau their new Prime Minister and John McCallum the new "Minister of Immigration and Refugees" (sic).

As the Canadian winter wore on, it became clear that many Canadians (and wannabe Canadians pushed to the back of the queue by the Syrians) weren't happy with the favoured refugee status being accorded to 1000s of Muslims -- doubtless including at least a few Islamic extremists -- who cannot and will not be assimilated into Canadian society. A fierce anti-Muslim, anti-refugee backlash quickly became evident in the comments appended to pro-refugee propaganda planted by the Liberals every damned day in the lamestream media. See "'Real Canadians hate Syrians!' - Calgary graffiti reflect poll results", WWW 21/2/16.

But never mind. Now that the election's over, Messrs Trudeau and McCallum don't need to read the comments or pay attention to the polls. Indeed, Mr. McCallum (pictured before and after his Minoxidil treatments) was pleased to announce that the target had been met and 25,000 refugees -- oops, "New Canadians" -- had indeed been "welcomed" to the Great Not-so-white North, and were being fast-tracked to citizenship.

But wait, he said... there will be more! Why stop at 25,000?! Canada could easily take another 10,000 by the end of 10/6. Maybe even another 25,000! Wouldn't that be great?! That would win Canada a seat on the UN Security Council for sure!

And then came silence. Some idealistic Canucks are still read, even eager to take in more Muslims. Hundreds of Canadians who’ve come together to sponsor Syrian refugees are being told it could be next year before their new charges arrive, after a series of changes to the Liberals’ resettlement program. In Toronto, upwards of 600 private groups have spent months raising money, finding apartments and gathering supplies. But now some are being told it will be more than eight months before the families they are sponsoring arrive, while others hear that if they’ve not yet been matched with a family it’s unlikely they’ll see anyone before 2017.

Why so? Well, it seems the Gliberals have quietly put a cap on applications this year, and have cut back on staff handling the paperwork. Moreover, they're bring back -- very quietly, again -- the travel loan programme under which refugees have to repay the government for the airfare, rather than flying for free in RCAF planes. These changes essentially reverse much of what the previous Conservative government and then the Liberals did to respond to a surge in demand last fall for Canada to bring in more Syrians.

Questions were asked in the House of Commons this week, but M Trudeau wouldn’t directly address the cuts. "We continue to be engaged with the issue of Syrian refugees, making it a priority to continue to show that Canada is a strong and welcoming country," was his platitude for the week.

Meanwhile, John McCallum -- now referred to as the Immigration Minister (only) -- said he is "aware" that enthusiasm to support Syrians won’t last forever. Well, duh! But in spite of his statement that "We want to create the conditions where Canadians are able and as quickly as possible to sponsor those refugees," the flood of real or alleged refugees has been reduced to a trickle. Between February 27th and March 8th, 600 new government-assisted refugees and 433 privately sponsored arrived. In the 12 days after, only nine (9) government-assisted refugees and 16 privately sponsored arrived. Only one person who is part of a program that blends the two streams arrived in that time.

Walt advises Canadians to hold their applause until, say, November, when there may well be a surge in the number of refugee applications from, errr, the US of A!

Further reading: Are draft-dodgers or people who leave their country just because they don't like the government real refugees? See "The definition of a 'refugee' narrows", by Adnan Khan, in Maclean's.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

One of Walt's favourite bloggers/pundits/whatever is Ezra Levant of TheRebel.media. Having stood up to the socialist government of his home province, Alberta, who wanted to shut him up by declaring him a "non-journalist", Mr. Levant is doing a series on the effects of Muslim mass migration on Europe. The "Million Muslim March" is what he calls it. In this video, he interviews Muslim men in Malmo, Sweden, a city the Muslims have turned into "New Somalia" in just 20 years. Prepare to be outraged, not so much by the attitudes of the Muslim layabouts, but by the willful blindness to reality of the Swedish woman who speaks in the second part of the video.

By the way... there's a commercial in there for a "Rebel Cruise". Sail the seas with Ezra and like-minded folks. Who knew? I'd be tempted to go, if only I didn't get seasick. I'm a great believer in terra firma; the more firmer, the less terror.

This is the third time I've posted a map of the Indian Ocean, to which I've added arrows showing the direction of key ocean currents, and a red star showing the location of the US military base at Diego Garcia. Look at this as you read my list of the three pieces of aircraft wreckage which have washed up on the shores of Réunion, Mozambique and South Africa. Australian authorities have now confirmed that the second piece, recovered earlier this month, is "highly likely" to have come from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared just over two years ago.

To summarize... MH370 was carrying 239 pax and crew when it vanished shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia, just above centre right on the map) bound for Beijing on 8 March 2014. When last "observed" by radar, it was heading to the northwest, roughly in the direction of the West Equatorial current, which I've drawn on in black.

For reasons about which we can only speculate, the Australian authorities who took charge of the search thought that the plane then made a turn of roughly 180 degrees, flying on southeasterly course for as long as five hours before plunging into the ocean somewhere off the west coast of Australia, which is where they've been searching ever since.

Even though the search area has been doubled from 60,000 square kilometres (as shown) to 120,000 sq.km., they've found... wait for it... nil, nada, bupkis... nothing at all.

Meanwhile... in July of 2015 a piece of aircraft wreckage was found on the island of Réunion. You'll find it on the other side of the map, in the western part of the Indian Ocean, 1000 of kilometres from the search area. The wreckage turned out to be a flaperon, which French experts confirmed in September came from the ill-fated B-777.

Fast forward to the first week of this month, when a US adventurer who was carrying out his own independent search for MH370 found a white, metre-long chunk of metal off the coast of Mozambique. That's in the southeastern part of Africa, at the west end of the Indian Ocean. The Aquinas Current flows in a southerly direction between the island of Madagascar and the African mainland. Today, Reuters reports that a Malaysian government investigation team has found that "both pieces of debris" [sic] are consistent with panels from a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft.

Reuters quotes Australia's minister for infrastructure and transport, Darren Chester, as saying that "The analysis has concluded the debris is almost certainly from MH370. That such debris has been found on the east coast of Africa is consistent with drift modelling...and further affirms our search efforts in the southern Indian Ocean."

Excuse me for doubting, but it seems to me equally if not more plausible that the wreckage found along the paths of the Aquinas and Moçambique Currents -- see map!!! -- drifted south from from the site of a "water landing" somewhere in the northwest sector of the Indian Ocean. Let's say somewhere around, oh, Diego Garcia!

But wait (as Vince Offer would say), there's more! Just yesterday we learned that yet another piece of debris -- an inlet cowling from a Rolls Royce jet engine -- had been found. Guess where? Off the coast of Australia? Errr, no. See "Piece of MH370 engine cover washes up on South African shore". A Malaysian team is en route to Seff Africa to retrieve this latest find. Walt waits with bated breath to hear what Mr. Chester will say if this piece too turns out to belong to MH370.

What investigators really need to find is the main underwater wreckage, which would hold the plane's "black boxes" (flight data recorders). These should reveal details related to the plane's controls, including whether aircraft systems that might have helped track the plane were deliberately turned off, as some investigators believe. Walt suggests (once again) that the investigators ask the US military for a little help. They would surely lend a hand, wouldn't they... unless of course they had something to hide.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

You don't have to be an aviation expert to know what this is. Any observant person who's sat near the wings of a jet with Rolls Royce engines will have seen the famous "RR" logo on the outside of an engine. To be specific, the picture shows part of an inlet cowling, found on Monday by Neels Kruger, a South African archaeologist walking along the shore of a lagoon near the town of Mossel Bay. That's on South Africa's southern coast, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet.

Mr Kruger told AP the piece he found is about 70 centimetres by 70 centimetres "with chunks gone from the side." He took photos and sent it to a friend who is a pilot, who in turn passed it on to other pilots, who all quickly became convinced that this was part of a jet engine. Mr Kruger then alerted the South African Civil Aviation Authority who told him to sit tight until further instruction. The Seff Africans contacted Malaysian authorities. Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai issued a statement saying that "Based on early reports, there is a possibility of the piece originating from an inlet cowling of an aircraft engine, but a further examination and analysis are needed to verify whether it belongs to Flight 370." A team is on the way to South Africa to retrieve the debris.

Mossel Bay isn't marked on the map, because back in July we were concentrating on the shores of Madagascar and Réunion. But you can see where Mossel Bay is, at the very left edge of the map, where the land and water meet. You can also see how the Aquinas Current could have carried debris from the northeast, through the Moçambique Channel to the south coast of South Africa.

Note that there is no current which would have carried debris westward from the area which the "experts" have been searching for the remains of MH370. If the inlet cowling found this week proves to have come from MH370, that makes three (3) pieces of the B-777 found on the shores of the southwestern part of the Indian Ocean, far from the search area. (For details on the second finding, earlier this month, see "Credible report of another piece of MH370 found far from search area", WWW 2/3/16.)

The more pieces are discovered far from where they should be (according to the authorities), the more Walt thinks that the mystery of MH370's disappearance can only be solved by full disclosure from the US military of what happened, two years and two weeks ago, somewhere around the American base on Diego Garcia. One day the truth will out!

Speaking of the Muslim terrorist attack on a Canadian Forces recruiting office, our esteemed agent calls it "a sordid story. One wonders what went through the mind of Ayanie Hassan Ali before the attack. What did he really hope to accomplish in the name of Allah? And he was born and raised [in Canada]! Could be a result of too much inbreeding through his heritage. Will raise suspicion for anyone with a beard."

Last night I heard a "security expert" giving his explanation for the Muslims' attacks on Westerners. He said that in Europe and North America, Muslims are "marginalized" and the victims of discrimination, demonization and (of course) Islamophobia. He made a thinly veiled reference to Donald Trump and others who preach "exclusion".

That's rubbish! Totally! A big black crock! The answer to Agent 6's question, and the contradiction to the politically correct explanation of the "expert", is to be found in what Ayanie Hassan Ali shouted as he knifed the soldiers. "Allah told me to do this," he yelled. "Allah told me to come here and kill people!"

The celebrators of diversity were quick to say that was just the rant of one deranged individual, not representative of the feelings of the vast majority of "moderate Muslims". That's rubbish too! Rewind to October 2014 when two "homegrown, radicalized Muslims" killed two Canadian soldiers in separate incidents in Ottawa and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Not long before the attacks, a young Canuck fighting in the sandpit for ISIS posted a video warning "We're coming to get you!" -- referring to not just the Great Satan but the British, Canadians, Australians and any others who would dare to wage war on them, or stand in the way of their jihad to establish a New Caliphate in the Middle East.

That's pretty much the truth of it. The Islamic terrorists -- ISIS (or whatever we're calling it today), al-Qaeda and the rest of them -- have declared jihad (holy war) on all Christians and other unbelievers, and are exhorting their followers and sympathizers in every country to "kill the infidels, wherever they may be found!"

"Wherever they may be found" includes Paris, Madrid, London, New York, Boston, Ottawa, Toronto, San Bernardino... and now Brussels. This shouldn't come as a surprise. See "Turkish President Erdoğan predicted Brussels bombings last Friday!", WWW 22/3/16. And please, let's stop saying it's because we're being mean to Muslims. The Islamic extremists want to kill us... because Allah's telling them to!

Footnote: On the Vatican Insider web page, Andrea Tornielli quotes the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal, as taking issue with the US announcement that a genocidal campaign against Christians is taking place in the Middle East. "The statement comes too late, when everything has already happened," said the prelate. "Everyone has either escaped or [is] dead."

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

One of my favourite blogs is written by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. He cleverly calls it Scott Adams' Blog. If only I could be so creative and make a fortune being sarcastic about the many deficiencies of our society. (Perhaps "society" isn't quite the right word nowadays, but I digress...)

Yesterday Mr. Adams gave us a little visual lesson on the evolution of American politics from the founding of the Republic to this year's campaign for the presidensity. Here it is.

Further reading: Scott Adams says Naval Ravikant’s essay "American Spring" inspired him. I read it and recommend you do so. Here's one paragraph which strikes me as particularly trenchant.

"The Elite Party runs the system and it basically works. The elite stay elite. Income may be taxed, but wealth compounds. The most belligerent and implacable of the masses are sent to fight in mercifully distant wars. Crime happens in other people’s neighborhoods. The prisons are full and everyone is being watched. The pie expands, slowly and unevenly, and all is well."

The first thing Walt does when he stumbles out of bed is fire up the old rangdidio to catch up on the news of overnight disasters. The site of today's catastrophe is Brussels, the capital of Belgium, which is in virtual lockdown after explosions rocked the airport and subway system. The death toll at last count was 26, with many more injured.

According to the public transport operator, 15 people were killed and 81 injured in a blast at Maelbeek metro station. The Belgian health minister said 11 people died in two explosions at the Zaventem airport just outside Brussels. The number of killed may yet rise, as earlier reports put the airport death toll at 13.

As yet, no-one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and no-one has said it was Muslim jihadists that did it. But Belgium's federal prosecutor said that at least one of the explosions at the airport was likely caused by a suicide bomber. He earlier described the explosions as terror attacks. And Reuters reported that a witness said he heard shouts in Arabic shortly before two blasts struck the packed airport departures area. Walt is offering 99 to 1 odds (place your bets by PayPal) that the attackers were followers of the prophet.

Hold on... Perhaps it's not fair for me to take your money. I had a tipoff from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan! This past Friday Mr. Erdoğan gave a speech at a ceremony to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli, in which he warned European countries about terrorist organizations. Here's what he said. "Once again I call on countries that directly or indirectly support terror groups. The snakes you are sleeping with can bite you any time. European countries are paying no attention as if they are dancing in a minefield. There is no reason why the bomb that exploded in Ankara cannot explode in Brussels, in any other European city."

Sadly, it's not just European leaders who are paying no attention. The "Leader of the Free World" [Who dat? Ed.] pays no attention. POTUS's would-be successor -- Hellery Clinton -- pays no attention. The Canuck celebrity who thinks he's the up-and-coming champion of progressivism -- Justin Trudeau -- pays no attention. And when someone like Donald Trump says folks like Mr. Erdoğan and Marine Le Pen (see yesterday's post) are right, and we should keep the Muslims out, they call him a racist. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear!

Monday, March 21, 2016

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Front National, was in Canada this weekend, to find out whether Canadians feel the same way as the French about the Muslim invasion of the West. The answer, apparently, is NON, probably because Canadians have not yet woken up to the fact that North America is the next target after Europe.

The wave of Islamist extremism engulfing France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, etc etc, won't stop on Europe's Atlantic coast. Once the "refugees" and asylum-seekers have overrun Europe, the next stop will be Canada and the USA. In fact 25,000 Syrians -- mainly Muslim -- have already been "welcomed" into Canada, and before he leaves office the Prez and his liberal Democrat buddies are determined to override the objections of state governors and admit 10,000 to the USA, all at taxpayers' expense of course.

Canada’s political leaders, she said, have shown little regard for the consequences of their decisions. Those consequences include the accelerating demands of religious minorities, such as providing space for prayer or the establishment of religious courts. The result can only be increased religious tensions. As Mme Le Pen puts it, "A multicultural society is a society in conflict."

At about the same time Mme Le Pen was speaking, Pope Francis, in his homily at Palm Sunday Mass, called on Christians to stop being "indifferent" to the plight of the refugees. Walt thinks the Pope got it wrong. There are many good Christians who are far from indifferent. They are opposed to the put-out-the-welcome-mat policies of their government. Why? Because they see their religion and their culture as under threat. Which is what Mme Le Pen was saying. I'd say her view of the situation is considerably more clear than that of the Holy Father.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

The Color of Crime is a report from the New Century Foundation and American Renaissance on differences in crime rates by race, bias in the justice system, and interracial crime. First published as a monograph in 1999, it has now been updated and expanded in a just-released 2016 edition.

What is the predominant colour of crime in America? No prizes if you guessed BLACK. Blacks are 27 times more likely to attack whites than vice versa, six times more likely than non-blacks to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race. BROWN (Hispanic) crime ranks second. White and Asian crime come in third and fourth.

Here's Jared Taylor, President of New Century Foundation, with some of the report's key findings.

* The evidence suggests that if there is police racial bias in arrests it is negligible. Victim and witness surveys show that police arrest violent criminals in close proportion to the rates at which criminals of different races commit violent crimes.

* There are dramatic race differences in crime rates. Asians have the lowest rates, followed by whites, and then Hispanics. Blacks have notably high crime rates. This pattern holds true for virtually all crime categories and for virtually all age groups.

* In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.

* In 2013, of the approximately 660,000 crimes of interracial violence that involved blacks and whites, blacks were the perpetrators 85% of the time. This meant a black person was 27 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa. A Hispanic was eight times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa.

* In 2014 in New York City, a black was 31 times more likely than a white to be arrested for murder, and a Hispanic was 12.4 times more likely. For the crime of "shooting" (firing a bullet that hits someone), a black was 98.4 times more likely than a white to be arrested, and a Hispanic was 23.6 times more likely.

* If New York City were all white, the murder rate would drop by 91%, the robbery rate by 81%, and the shootings rate by 97%.

* In an all-white Chicago, murder would decline 90%, rape by 81%, and robbery by 90%.

* In 2015, a black person was 2.45 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by the police. A Hispanic person was 1.21 times more likely. These figures are well within what would be expected given race differences in crime rates and likelihood to resist arrest.

* In 2015, police killings of blacks accounted for approximately 4% of homicides of blacks. Police killings of unarmed blacks accounted for approximately 0.6% of homicides of blacks. The overwhelming majority of black homicide victims (93%) were killed by blacks.

* Both violent and non-violent crime has been declining in the United States since a high in 1993. 2015 saw a disturbing rise in murder in major American cities that some observers associated with "depolicing" in response to intense media and public scrutiny of police activity.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Today we have a nice picture of some smiling citizens of the happiest country in the world.

Yes, dear readers, they're Danes. Aren't they great? [Geddit? Ed. ... Great Danes! Geddit now?] Every year, the World Happiness Report surveys numerous people from various countries around the world to find out which country has the happiest population. [Geddit? That's why it's called the "World Happiness Report". Ed. Geddit now?] This year’s winner is Denmark, followed closely by Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway. Canada ranked 6th. And the USA? Errr, 13th. And that was before Super Tuesday!

The lamestream media have been full of stories on the happiness of Danes, extolling Denmark's liberal democracy, managed economy, peacefulness and prosperity. What they don't mention, though, is the fact that Denmark's society is remarkably homogenous. As the picture shows, most Danes are white Scandinavians who share a common language, culture and religion. And their laws and policies and immigration and designed to keep it that way.

Just a couple of months ago, the Danish parliament overwhelmingly passed a bill to solidify Denmark’s reputation as Western Europe’s least attractive country for refugees. The law empowers Danish authorities to seize any assets exceeding $1450 from asylum-seekers in order to help pay for the migrants' subsistence in the country. It also extends, from one year to three, the period that those who are resettled must wait to apply for family members to join them in Denmark.

Why did the Danes do this? It's not that they haven't welcomed immigrants in the past. Over the course of the 20th century, the country of nearly 6 million became home to refugees and immigrants from the Soviet bloc, the Balkans, and beyond. Today, immigrants and their descendants account for 10% percent of Denmark'se total population. Denmark has also been a prominent advocate for refugees and asylum-seekers.

Perhaps that last phrase should read "true refugees and asylum-seekers", not to be confused with the bogus refugees and economic migrants from countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Pakistan [That may be stretching it a bit. Ed.] now making a pit stop in Denmark en route to Sweden or having missed the exit for Germany. In 2015, 21,000 people sought asylum in Denmark -- up from 14,815 asylum applications in 2014 and 7,557 in 2013. These are numbers that the Danish welfare state -- which guarantees free health care, education and other benefits to every resident -- is struggling to handle.

According to "How Not to Welcome Refugees" (Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 2016), the Danish government last August cut social benefits to refugees and immigrants by 45%, in a move marketed as an "integration benefit". To ensure the message was clearly received, they advertised the benefit cut, as well as other government policies that asylum-seekers might find unappealing, in newspapers in Lebanon, which has a large refugee population.

More recently, the government proposed moving refugees from urban housing to camps outside cities, an initiative that would "shift the focus of government immigration policy to repatriation rather than integration". What that means -- in plain English (or Danish) -- is they want all the refugees and asylum-seekers to go back where they came from!

Sometimes the hints are a little more subtle. According to the same article, a Danish city council mandated the placement of pork on municipal menus (observant Muslims don’t eat pork), including at schools and daycare centres. That's quite a contrast with what the Germans are doing. See "German schools won't offend Muslims, drop sausage from lunch menus", WWW 7/3/16. Walt is investigating the possibility that Donald Trump is not a German Nazi, as his detractors say, but a Dane!

To return to the question of why the Danes are whipping the Willkommen mat out from under the feet of the Muslim invaders, the explanation is simple. It's what the Danish people want! One recent poll showed that 37% of voters opposed offering more residence permits to migrants. Another poll indicated that 70% felt the refugee crisis constituted the most important issue on the political agenda.

An official of the Migration Policy Institute -- an organization which does nicely out of being nice to migrants -- characterized the average Dane's attitude thus: "I want to protect the fact that my country, a small country, is an extremely wealthy country; that it provides these exceptional benefits to its people; and I don’t want to compromise my ability to receive those benefits simply because more and more people want to come in." In other words, "We're happy because we're here and they're not." Sorry, liberals, but that's human nature.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Walt wasn't the only one to take note of the refusal of the Canadian meeja and Toronto police to make any connection between Monday's terrorist attack on a Canadian Armed Forces recruiting centre in Toronto and the religion of the attacker. See "2 Canuck soldiers stabbed by Muslim terrorist ... IN TORONTO!", WWW 14/3/16.

Toronto police chief Saunders had to admit, the next morning that the words uttered by Ayanie Hassan Ali (pictured) that caused the cops so much "concern" were "Allah made me do it!" But, Chief Saunders warned, we'd better not get into "that Islamophobia thing". Wouldn't be politically correct, you know, to mention that Allah is what Muslims call the One God that we supposedly all worship. Mr. Ali is a Muslim. His religion is called Islam. That's the word that no good pro-diversity Canadian will say.

Yesterday a 27-year-old Muslim man walked into a Canadian Armed Forces recruiting office in North Toronto and started stabbing soldiers, saying that he was doing it for Allah, the Muslim god. But at a press conference, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders got whiny at the mere suggestion that a Muslim committing terrorism in the name of Islam might be... an Islamic terrorist. It was weird to watch.This terrorist was born in Canada. But he decided to hate us and kill us, starting with symbols of our country. What did this? Well, the one thing so terrifying that Chief Saunders and the CBC and most of the rest of the media won’t dare even name: Islam.

Unlike the Paranoid States of America, the so-called United Kingdom does not insist on the separation of church and state. Quite the opposite. The Church of English is the "established" (official) church of, errr, England [Duh! Ed.] and the Queen of England is "Fidei Defensor" (Defender of the Faith), etc etc. As well, senior members of the Anglican hierarchy have positions in the British Parliament as "Lords Spiritual". So it is that the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the C of E, occasionally makes public his opinions on matters political.

The incumbent Archbishop, Rt. Rev. Justin Welby, gave a lengthy interview to Politics Home, Parliament’s weekly magazine, in which he called upon Britons to be welcoming to migrants but said that concerns about assimilating them into British society are not racist. "There is a tendency to say 'those people are racist', which is just outrageous, absolutely outrageous,>" said Britain's chief cleric. "Fear is a valid emotion at a time of such colossal crisis. This is one of the greatest movements of people in human history. Just enormous. And to be anxious about that is very reasonable."

Archbishop Welby accepts that, politically, the debate around refugees and migrants is deeply divisive, and says concerns about the pressure new arrivals could place on communities and services are entirely legitimate. "In fragile communities particularly – and I’ve worked in many areas with very fragile communities over my time as a clergyman – there is a genuine fear: what happens about housing? What happens about jobs? What happens about access to health services? There is a genuine fear. And it is really important that that fear is listened to and addressed. There have to be resources put in place that address those fears."

Speaking of the jihad being waged by ISIS and other Islamic extremists against the West, Archbishop Welby warned that, "For the first time in centuries in this country ... we find ourselves involved in conflict which has very, very significant theological aspects. Not only in the Middle East but around the world, in all kinds of places, you’re seeing the outworking of that. You’re seeing it in Libya, in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, right across the Levant and Mesopotamia.... And therefore an intelligent response to this must include theological and religious literacy, and an understanding of what drives people when they are caught up in religious ideas."

Internationally, he opines, that means confronting those states, in particular Saudi Arabia, that have aided the development of extremism and violence. "The key thing is, if we are going to deal with extremism, mainstream religious leaders – which within many parts of the Islamic world includes governments – must be very, very clear about taking responsibility for the violence within their own traditions ... and tackling that effectively. That will mean places like Saudi Arabia tackling extremist thinking within their own tradition. Much support has come from within those countries, and they need to be challenged on that. They need to stamp out the support for the extremist views from within their own societies."

In order to be fully successful, the Archbishop said, the struggle against religious violence and extremism must involve a domestic component too. He offered a staunch defence of the UK’s own "Judeo-Christian tradition", and warned against attempts to dilute those values out of a misplaced fear of causing offence.
"I think you’ve got to be very clear about rights and wrongs," he said. "You can’t turn a blind eye, in any way at all."

This, he added, is where secularism too often goes wrong. A successful multi-faith society, he believes, should not view faith as a threat to be pushed to the margins, nor identity as a zero-sum game of exchange, where different groups deny their values to avoid alienating others. "We need to be confident about our own heritage, our Judeo-Christian heritage, whether we’re believers or not," he says. "That is what has shaped our own values, and we need to be confident in that." [My emphasis. Walt]

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Anyone who doubts that the invasion of Europe by the Muslim hordes is well and truly under way should watch this video. Running time is 19:31. Parts of the audio have been deleted to avoid copyright problems. Thanks to Agent 6 for sending us the link.

Here's a commentary on the video, by the person who edited it and posted it to YouTube. The emphasis is Walt's.

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly." - Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BC

You are witnessing what will be shown to future generations as the reason for the fall of an empire. At current immigration levels and disappearing birth rates native Europeans are destined to become a minority in their own countries within decades. This is already the case for many of Europe's largest cities.Europeans have effectively lost their right to exist as cultures and nations in their own homelands and are facing extinction. Millions of young Muslim men leave behind their family, pay thousands to criminal traffickers to reach the land they have been promised by European politicians illegally. Dubbed by the media as "refugees", they cross through 6-10 safe countries to reach wealthy nations like Germany or Sweden where they hope to receive a better life at the expense of the taxpayer. Only a fraction of them are Syrian, as they enter unfiltered, without any documents and without any legitimate right to claim asylum. Women and children are rarely seen, except in the cherry-picked sob stories of the media.

Any indigenous resistance of Europeans who refuse to hand over the countries of their ancestors to often radical and criminal Muslim foreigners is labeled "hateful", "racist", even "Nazi". The level of cultural, moral and political subversion with egalitarian and Marxist ideologies has reached levels the KGB would never have dreamed of. Equality and tolerance are lies that serve none but a few.The Left, mainly orchestrated by Zionist interests, is destroying our countries from the inside. Patriotism, the most basic and fundamental trait of any nation that wants to survive, has become something to be ashamed of. Feminism has destroyed family values and birth rates. Healthy nationalism has been replaced with a culture of guilt, self-hatred, apathy, degeneracy and pathological altruism. We are told to embrace "diversity". In reality this simply means instead of just being a global minority, Europeans are supposed to become a minority in their own countries as well. No civilized society can keep up with the birth rate of third world immigrants, especially when the main goal is integration rather than assimilation. Parallel societies breed poverty, crime and radicalism. Multiculturalism has never, at any time in human history, worked anywhere. If you believe otherwise, you're delusional. In fact it's the primary reason for every major conflict.

The crimes committed by the EU against the European peoples are directly in violation of the 1948 UN genocide convention, Article II: (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Because of this injustice, rightist parties everywhere in Europe are gaining astonishing amounts of support. [See "German anti-immigrant party makes big gains: the meaning for the USA", WWW 14/3/16.]

Any European who does not rise up to defend his country from foreign invasion because he's too scared of words does not deserve it.

Monday, March 14, 2016

LATEST NEWS: Walt was lucky he didn't make bets on the suspect's name being "Mohammed". (See update below.) In fact he's Ayanie Hassan Ali, shown here in a picture released by Toronto's finest(?). He has been charged with one count of attempted murder, two counts of assault with weapon, one count of weapons dangerous and one count of aggravated assault. According to Inspector Knacker, Mr. Ali is a Canadian, born in Montréal and now living in Toronto (as Her Majesty's guest, since yesterday).

No mention was made of Mr. Ali's religion. However, sez Toronto's top cop, he shouted "Allah told me to do this, Allah told me to come here and kill people." Lifetime pct (taking into account being wrong about the name) still .989.

ORIGINAL STORY, called in by Agent 3 yesterday:

Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders says a 27-year-old man is under arrest after two members of the Canadian Forces were stabbed in north Toronto Monday afternoon. A man walked into a federal building, which houses a Canadian Armed Forces recruitment centre, pulled out a knife and attacked the person behind the counter. The attacker attempted to move farther into the building, but was taken down by a group of between six and eight soldiers. Two soldiers reportedly suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

Chief Saunders refused to divulge any information about the suspect, except for his age and gender, but did say that the suspect uttered "certain comments that are of concern". Agent 3 suggests that the "comments" might have been "Allahu akbar!" or words to that effect. All the police chief would say is that his minions are "strongly considering the possibility that the attack was an act of terrorism."

WWW will bring you an update just as soon as the PC police and censors at the CBC have figured out how to spin the story.

UPDATE 15/3/16 -- Just as we predicted (lifetime pct .989), the Toronto Sun reports (14/6/16. 7:06 PM EDT): A brazen knife attack that sent two Canadian soldiers to hospital was disturbing enough, but police sources say it was the attacker uttering the word "Allah" that prompted Toronto Police to call in terror experts.Chief Mark Saunders told reporters outside of the federal building at 4900 Yonge St., north of Sheppard Ave., Monday that the male suspect used "certain comments" that were as concerning as the violent attack. He did not elaborate, but several police sources say witnesses told them "Allah" was used."Some heard him say, 'Praise Allah' and others heard 'Allah' or 'Aly,'" a police source told the Sun. "Several heard the man use this terminology. It’s not something you take a chance on and this is why the call was made to the police agencies who handle terror issues."

The suspect is still unnamed, but Walt is having trouble getting bets against "Mohammed". No word on his nationality, ethnicity, religion or status in Canada. Can you spell "refugee", boys and girls? I knew you could!

Mark Kraschel, of Portland OR, wrote the following letter to the editors of The Economist. It appears on the letters page of the current issue under the heading "The Trump revolution" and is worth reproducing here in full.

You used so much ink trying to convince us that Donald Trump is not fit for office ("Time to fire him", February 27th). Do you think the type of person who reads your erudite publication would ever consider voting for him? Not likely. The people who will vote for The Donald are the disaffected bitter-clingers whom the last candidate you passionately begged us to vote for -- Barack Obama -- disparaged in his campaign. Those same disaffected people haven't been doing well over the past eight years, and in case you haven't noticed, they are mad as hell.

Government isn't working for us. There are few good jobs, we've been stuck with a joke of a health-care system, the few rights we still enjoy are under siege and the future looks dim for our children. We are powerless to foment a revolution while working two part-time jobs to make ends meet, so all we can do is register a protest against the Dickensian nightmare that the elites have created for us by voting.

Apparently, nobody listened to what we were trying to say in 2012. Come November, you'll be hearing from us again, louder and clearer.

In 1990, an American attorney and free speech advocate named Mike Godwin propounded a "rule of Nazi analogies", now known as Godwin's Law. In Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age (MIT Press), Mr. Goodwin posited that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1", i.e. if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.

Now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric, Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis – often referred to as "playing the Hitler card".

In the increasingly turbulent campaign for the US presidensity, we are seeing the Hitler card played almost every day by the opponents of Donald Trump, particularly after the Donald called on his supporters to raise their right hands and promise to vote for him.

Those who have implicitly or explicitly likened Mr. Trump to Hitler need to learn not just Godwin's Law but its corollary: He who plays the Hitler card has already lost the argument! As The Economist reports, "Mr Trump won [Mississippi and Michigan] handsomely, despite...leading a crowd in Orlando in a pledge of allegiance to himself, accompanied by a fascist-style salute."

The results of yesterday's elections in three German states should also be instructive to Mr. Trump's detractors. Supporters of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of "Willkommenskultur" -- welcoming 1000s of Muslim "refugees" -- were shocked by the strong showing of the "neo-Nazi" Alternativ für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), led by Frauke Petry, who the lamestream media have already likened to... wait for it... Hitler.

The main plank in the AfD's platform -- some would say the only plank -- was a promise to stop the "Asylchaos" caused by the invasion of the Fatherland by over a million unassimilable Muslim "refugees" and "asylum-seekers" -- something about which the Donald warned in January.

The AfD made huge gains in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, taking a quarter of the vote to become the second-biggest party in the state legislature. In Baden-Württemberg, Frau Merkel's CDU lost a third of its support, reaching a historic low of 27%, while the AfD gained about 15% of the vote. In Rhineland-Palatinate the Social Democrats maintained their position as the strongest party, the CDU came second - in a state they had hoped to win - and the AfD came fourth with 12.5%.

Those who hurl epithets like "Hitler" at their opponents would do well to remember that Hitler was elected democratically, on a wave of popular support for his promise to make Germany great again. The German people wanted their country to be great again, just as Americans want the USA to be great again. Draw your own conclusions.

Note from Ed.: So far, Frau Petry seems to have avoided having her picture taken with her right arm raised in the air!

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Associated Press ran an interesting quote yesterday from one of Dubai's top security officials. Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, the Gulf statelet's Deputy Chairman of Police and General security, took to Twitter to jmuse about what would happen if the Republicans choose Donald Trump as their standard-bearer in the November elections, and the Donald beats Hellery Clinton, as seems almost certain. (Lifetime pct .976.)

Earlier in the week Mr. Trimp had said that Islam hates the West, something which everyone knows but our wimpy "leaders" refuse to say. During the GOP debate on Thursday, Mr. Trump said he wouldn't retract that statement or stoop to being politically correct by avoiding such statements in future.

On Twitter, Lt. Gen. Tamim referred to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington's theory that future wars would be fought between cultures, warning that a Trump win could see him -- the Donald -- face ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a clash of civilizations. "If Trump beats Hillary (Clinton)," he wrote, "that means that the scenario of the clash of civilizations created by Samuel will come to light at the hands of the candidate and al-Baghdadi."

Indeed. Will Mr. Trump's response be "Bring it on!"? If it comes down to that, I know which side I'm on!

The chattering classes poo-pooed the notion that a protest led by "religious nuts" and "homophobic immigrants" could have any impact. And the Liberal government of openly lesbian Premier Kathleen Wynne -- pictured here in a classroom -- fought back, of course, with a lavishly funded advertising campaign which was quickly pulled in response to 1000s of dislikes and snide remarks in the social media. See "What do you think of the Ontario government's VIDEO promoting its new dirty sex-ed curriculum?", 1/10/15.

Parents As First Educators has led the charge to keep the secular humanists in Ontario's "Pink Palace" from brainwashing impressionable kids (as young as 6!) with their pro-LGBTQ2S, anti-religous "values". See "Stop shaming parents who balk at sex education in schools", WWW 21/9/15. And guess what? They're winning!

The war against teaching immorality in Ontario schools is far from over, but concerned parents have won a significant battle in Toronto, the font of all evil. This morning, the Chair of the Toronto District School Board conceded that the province's new sex-ed curriculum is largely to blame for declining enrolment. The megacity's "public" schools will have 3500 fewer students next year. As a result, the TDSB will cut 100 teaching positions and make other staff reductions.

In an interview on the CBC, Robin Pilkey said she believes about 2,500 of those are children being pulled from schools by parents upset with the new sex-ed curriculum, which came into force in the fall of 2015 amid widespread protest. The pro-queer curriculum teaches masturbation, "gender expression" and the "value of diversity" -- but not the difference between right and wrong.

Walt congratulates PAFE and all the others who dare to stand up for decency and the values set out by God in Holy Scripture. Keep fighting!

Monday, March 7, 2016

Here's a scene you're not likely to see any more in the cafeteria of Germany's Bundestag -- Chancellor Angela Merkel chowing down on a delicious bratwurst. [Isn't that a foot-long wienie, as seen on SCTV? Ed.] Why not? Because, according to Britain's Express newspapers, bratwurst ist verboten!

That's right. Effective immediately, all kinds of sausages, bacon, ham and other pork products must no longer be sold in public cafés, cafeterias and school lunchrooms. Why?! So as not to offend "refugees" of course. An increasing number of public canteens, child daycare centres and schools have stopped serving pork because of "religious considerations". What religion would that be, I hear you ask. Well, there are still 1000s of Jews in Germany, but they haven't been complaining, so the recent fit of political correctness must have something to do with the hundreds of thousands of Muslims for whom Ms Merkel's government has put out the welcome mat.

But there are those, even in Ms Merkel's own party, who have had enough of the enforced Willkommenskultur. CDU party representative Daniel Günther insists that the consumption of pork is part of German culture! While he concedes that tolerance means "the appreciation and sufferance of other food cultures and lifestyles", he argues that those who don't want to eat pork didn’t have to. Furthermore, he says, "The protection of minorities - including for religious reasons - must not mean that the majority is overruled in their free decision by ill-conceived consideration."

Hey, Republicans! Who ya gonna vote for? The bully or the zealot?! A look at the result of Super Saturday suggests that's what it's going to come down to.

Yes, Marco Rubio won the Commonpoverty of Puerto Rico, but so what. He'll be finished by the end of this month (lifetime pct .985) and the GOP Establishment will decide that it hates TrusTED Cruz marginally less than Donald Trump. But the betting now is that the Donald will will the convention, and quite possibly the nation.

Who sez? Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, that's who. Check out this clip from Fox & Friends yesterday morning.

This was the first time I saw Scott Adams on TV. I thought Dilbert was based on his own persona, but he really doesn't look anything like the eponymous engineer, does he.

Still talking Trump -- how could we not? -- I was thinking about writing about how dismayed I am to see the Republicans' so-called "debates" turning into pure trash talk [No oxymorons, please! Ed.], the kind of thing you would hear before an NFL game or a pro wrestling show. [Notice, Ed., that I didn't say "wrestling match".] Is this what American politics has come to? Is this "quality" of discourse what we expect from the putative leaders of the most powerful nation in the world?

As Michelle Malkin pointed out in "The 2016 GOP Debate Debacle", having "moderators" from the lamestream media doesn't help. But the real problem is American society itself. According to Andrew McCarthy, writing in the National Review, "A sick society breeds gutter politics". That, Mr. McCarthy says, makes Donald Trump the symptom, not the cause, of the culture rot with which the Excited States of America is rife.

When a once mighty oak is rotten to the core, or rotting from the core, what can you do to save it? I regret not having an answer for this very serious question. Do you? To leave a comment, from the landing page just click on the headline, and a new window will open, complete with comments box -- yours to use.

Friday, March 4, 2016

Readers with long memories may recall that way back in January of 2012, an Afghan immigrant to Canada, his second wife (in a polygamous marriage) and his son, all devout followers of the Prophet, were convicted of the murder by drowning of the man's first wife and three of his daughters by his second wife. See "GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY in Shafia honour killings" (WWW 29/1/12).

The murders were said to be a matter of "honour", or the Islamic concept thereof. The daughters, you see, were "bad girls" -- caught in the ultimate culture clash, living in Canada but not allowed to be Canadian. They were expected to behave like good Muslim daughters, to wear the hijab and marry a fellow Afghan. And when they rebelled against their father’s traditions and customs -- covertly at first, then for all the community to see -- the shame became too much to bear. Only a mass execution (staged to look like a foolish wrong turn into the Rideau Canal at Kingston) could wash away the stain of their secret boyfriends and revealing clothes. The infertile first wife was simply a convenient throw-in, an afterthought.

Under the Canadian justice system, Mohammad Shafia, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their eldest son, Hamed Shafia were entitled to an appeal as of right from their convictions of murder in the first degree, for which they had received sentences of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years. Agent 3 is following the proceedings in the Ontario Court of Appeal in Toronto this week.

The parents are appealing on the grounds that expert evidence about honour killings, the teachings of Islam and the culture of Afghanistan should not have been admitted because -- this is the argument -- the jury might have been prejudiced and made to feel that there was something wrong with Muslims who were only acting in accordance with their faith. The Crown's response is that without such evidence, it would have been difficult to establish a motive for what would otherwise have been senseless killings, or perhaps "just an accident", as the Shafias said.

The appeal of Hamed Shafia is even more implausible. A defence lawyer interviewed on Canadian TV last night described it as an argument that made him roll his eyes. At the time of the killings, the son was apparently 18 years old, as his ID and other documents said. Now, nearly seven years after the young man helped push the car containing the four women into the canal, his lawyers are telling the court that he was only 17, thus shouldn't have been tried as an adult, but a juvenile!

"New evidence" to that effect, the defence says, has fortuitously just arrived from Afghanistan, a country not known for its ability to keep accurate records or indeed tell time. The defence is asking for a new trial for Shafia fils, or at least a reduction of his sentence to the 10-year max he would have received as a youthful miscreant, which would put him back on the street in another five years or so.

As you read, ask yourself if Muslims like Mohammed Shafia are the kind of people you want to be welcomed into your country -- as refugees, asylum-seekers or immigrants -- from the sandpits of the Middle East. If the answer is no, and you're a Canadian, you could write to your MP, Minister of Refugees John McCallum or Prime Minister Just In Trudeau... but it won't do you any good. If you're American, Walt reminds you that there's an election coming up in just over eight months. Need I say more?

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Gen. Philip Breedlove, USAF, presently the top commander of NATO, told the US Congress on Tuesday that refugees from the Middle East and north Africa are masking the movement of terrorists and criminals. That's exactly what Walt and numerous other bloggers, commentators and pundits have been saying for months upon months. But the bleeding hearts making a nice buck from the human rights industry protest that refugees overwhelmingly have no ulterior motive but escape. Who ya gonna believe?

About five weeks ago Walt passed on a report of the finding, on a beach in southern Thailand, of what looked like a piece of wreckage from some sort of aircraft. The accompanying pix were far from proof that the debris was from a B-777, the kind of plane operated by Malaysian Airlines as flight MH370, or indeed from an airplane, period. The flotsam could have been part of a surfboard, as some experts suggested at the time.

A further problem with that report was the location of the finding -- a beach in southern Thailand, far from the island of Réunion, in the western Indian Ocean, which was where the only authenticated part from the missing aircraft washed up months earlier. Nothing further was heard about this, so the initial suspicion must be assumed to have been well founded.

Today, however, AP reports that debris that washed up in Moçambique (or Mozambique, using the English spelling) has been tentatively identified as a part from a Boeing 777, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. (Walt asks again why these reports about a Malaysian aircraft which supposedly disappeared in international airspace/waters always seem to come from unnamed American officials!)

According to AP, photos of the debris that washed up over the weekend appear to show the fixed leading edge of the right-hand tail section of a B-777. People who have handled the part, called a horizontal stabilizer, say it appears to be made of fibreglass composite on the outside, with aluminum honeycombing on the inside, the official said. The part is being transported to Malaysia.

Joao Abreu, Mozambique’s National Director of Civil Aviation, denied that authorities have found part of the missing plane, but Malaysian transport minister Liow Tiong Lai tweeted to confirm the discovery. "Based on early reports, high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a B777," he wrote. "It is yet to be confirmed & verified. dca—malaysia working w Australian counterparts to retrieve the debris." He also urged "everyone to avoid undue speculation as we are not able to conclude that the debris belongs to #mh370 at this time."

A glance at the atlas tells us that Mozambique is on the southeast coast of Africa, to the west of Madagascar which in turn is west of Réunion. As the map in "Current thinking on MH370" (WWW 31/7/15) shows, the Aquinas and Moçambique currents could easily have carried debris to Réunion or Madagascar or Moçambique from the site of a "water landing" somewhere around... wait for it... Diego Garcia, the location of a massive US military base.

The map also shows that Diego Garcia and the possible site of the crash are in the north central part of the Indian Ocean, 1000s of miles from the search area suggested by, errr, the US military. Draw your own conclusions.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

You have to hand it to Ontario's proudly lesbian Premier Kathleen Wynne. Not content with mandating a new pro-LGBTQ2S sex education curriculum for the provnince's publicly funded schools, she's making it her personal mission to ensure that the ins and outs of natural and unnatural sex are taught properly. Here she is introducing, errr, something to impressionable and impressed students -- apparently U18s -- at Toronto's Jarvis Collegiate.

Readers are invited to explain the difference between the shocking pink object and the green one. Answers on the back of a postcard to the usual address. No prizes.

Note from Ed.: We have not been able to verify the veracity of this photo, but are pretty sure it's a photo. For sure.

I confess to being a regular watcher of Judge Judy. For those who live on another planet and have never seen the show, IMDb describes it thus: "Judge Judy Sheindlin, a former judge from New York, tackles actual, small claims cases with her no-nonsense attitude in which damages of no more than $5,000 can be awarded.... After a case is closed, the defendant and plaintiff briefly confront each other outside the court-room."

Judge Judy is an example of what is called "reality TV". At the top of each show, we are told that "The people are real. The cases are real. The judgments are final!" I often paraphrase the first two sentences to "The people are stupid. The cases are stupid." The first sentence can also be changed to "The people are fat!" and be equally true.

Judge Judy, you see, stars average Americans -- the kind of fat, stupid people you see on the news or in a Michael Moore documentary. These fat stupid people do stupid things, as Judge Judy reminds them with her acid put-downs. So why do I watch these over-the-back-fence arguments about dog fights, accidents caused by unlicensed drivers driving cars with no insurance, and gifts to ex-lovers which the giver later claims were loans? Is it like the prurient curiosity we have passing by a car accident or a drunk passed out in the gutter? Why do I not avert my eyes?

Last night the explanation for my fascination was given to me by Lee Siegel, a Jewish, liberal, New Yorker who writes criticism and essays on culture for Harper's, The New Republic and The Atlantic Monthly. How strange that someone totally unlike me, writing in publications I never read, should understand my motivation so well! Here's what Mr. Siegel says in an an essay called "UFOs".

There is [in Americans a] surging love for the absurd, and therefore contemptible, person. From politics to reality shows, we seem to like to be surrounded by people ruleed by greed, hampered by stupidity, blinkered by obsession. These sad, bored [people], their faces blank, their landlocked figures full-sail with heartland obesity...--these people are easy to laugh at, and therefore easy to accommodate.In America, attention must be paid! Attention, that is, to everything freakish, inadequate, unthreatening, and thus usefully supportive perhaps of a shaky sense of worth, of identity. More and more, the spectacle of human inadequacy on television is like one long public stoning.

Exactly. Watching these obese, doltish and poor people makes us feel better about ourselves. We are better than they. OK... I confess... I am better than they. And I feel good about it. How about you?

Further reading: "UFOs" is the 39th chapter in a collection of Lee Siegel's essays published by Basic Books in 2007 as Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television. The book has not aged well. The first four sections ("Cops", "Sitcoms", "Comedy", and "Cartoons") critique shows which (as Garrison Keillor would say) are no longer with us. I would add, "and a good thing too." The sections on race, religion, war, news and documentaries are still relevant and worth reading.

About Me

Working-class Americans have been screwed by immigration, globalization, and adventurist foreign policies, perpetuated by both parties, at the bidding of the (((donors))) who have benefited from them most. Economic disruption and wage stagnation, fuelled in large part by globalization, are at the heart of the nation's problems. President Trump must remember this if he hopes to win a second term.